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Paranormal and Pseudoscience Evaluation by Ray Giorgio

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Paranormal and Pseudoscience Evaluation by Ray Giorgio

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Conformation Bias

Definition: When an audience deems information to be true and disregards new or well known knowledge on the subject.

Today there is plenty of evidence to support that autism is not caused from vaccines, yet some people still believe in this bias.

The myth that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) causes autism is not true. Dr. Andrew Wakefield as well as other research’s concluded to a poorly correlated study that was deemed in 1995. This article published in 2011 confirms this study to be false.

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Suppression by Authority

Definition: When a group of power has the ability to control a situation for the purpose of their wants than the needs of the people.

This article explains that although a person in a same sex relationship may have no signs of HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C or syphilis… is it not legal to participate in blood donations.

Why with the appropriate testing will the Canadian Blood Services not allow these individuals participate in blood donation?

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Canada's current limitations on blood donations from men who have sex with men don't match the science, according to some HIV researchers.

Currently, gay men can donate blood if they have not had sex with a man for at least five years. On August 15, that waiting period will be reduced to one year.

That's still much longer than warranted, said Dr. Paul MacPherson, an HIV researcher with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute's chronic disease program and associate professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa.
READ MORE: Blood donation ban for gay men dropped to 1 year from 5
Although gay men are at higher risk of HIV infection - they represent slightly less than half of HIV cases in Canada, according to estimates by the Public Health Agency of Canada - he believes that the risk of HIV getting into the blood system if that timeline was reduced is very low.

That's because of how Canadian Blood Services tests donations, he said. Blood Services does two tests on every batch: a test for antibodies and a "nucleic acid test". The concern is what's known as the "window period" - the time between when someone contracts HIV and the time at which it can be detected.

For an antibody test, he said that the window is about 42-50 days. For the nucleic acid test, results can be detected in approximately nine days, according to Canadian Blood Services. That's much less than a year.

"I would say the window period should match the science," he said. "I think Canadian Blood Services is just being super extra-cautious in putting it out to a year, but there's really no good data to say it needs to be one year."

So, to be cautious, he thinks the window period should be closer to two months.

And both he and Dr. Mark Wainberg, a professor of medicine and director of the McGill University AIDS Centre, believe that Canadian Blood Services should include some questions about donor behaviour in its screening of gay men.

"If you're a man in a long-term, stable relationship and you and your partner are both negative, then the risks are exactly the same as those of a heterosexual couple," said Wainberg, who is also a former president of the International AIDS Society.

"Why is it ok for a heterosexual college student who's 19 years old who's had sex with 40 women during his hormonal years, why is he able to give blood and a gay man who's in a long-term stable relationship is not? It's just stigmatizing, it's demeaning, and it doesn't make any scientific sense."

"All gay men are not at risk for HIV," said MacPherson. "A good proportion of gay men, like heterosexuals, are in monogamous relationships. So yes they may have had sex yesterday, but if they're in a closed partnership, you can't introduce HIV unless they're having sex with multiple partners. So is it gay men, or should it be people who are sexually active?"

Incremental steps

Canadian Blood Services' policy regarding men who have sex with men dates from the 1980s, when HIV screening was nowhere near as good as it is now.

Originally, it was a complete ban on donations from any man who had had sex with a man anytime from 1977 onwards.

Then, in 2013, it was reduced to banning any man who had had sex with a man in the last five years.

This was seen as an "incremental step" toward opening up the policy, said Dr. Mindy Goldman, medical director of donor and clinical services for Canadian Blood Services.

"It was a safe change. We did not see any decrease in safety, any increase in the number of donors found to be HIV-positive for example after going to the five-year deferral period."

Soon, it will be a one-year deferral - something that she agrees is "greatly in excess" of their testing window periods. But testing isn't everything, she said.

"How it's supposed to work is we complete all testing before products are put into inventory, so that blood products of people who test HIV-positive or for hepatitis or whatever are destroyed and are not used," she said.

"But you could have situations where your test doesn't work properly or you have an error and products are put into inventory or you're in an emergency situation where you cannot do the test before shipping product, etc. For those types of situations obviously you would prefer not to have a lot of HIV-positive units in that."

WATCH: Liberals could reverse ban on blood donations from gay men (Oct. 2016)

Canadian Blood Services will monitor the effects of the new one-year limitation on blood donations, looking for whether more HIV-positive samples are detected, and surveying donors to see whether they truthfully answered all the questions on their screening form, she said.

And, the agency will consult with interest groups like patient groups, the medical community and LGBTQ groups to come up with an updated donation policy - a process that could take years. It took three years to reduce the waiting period from five years to one, and further changes will require research, as there are fewer examples from other countries to look to, she said.

All that means that it's unlikely the restrictions on donations from gay men will be lifted during this current federal government's mandate - as the Liberals promised during the election campaign.

And although Wainberg believes that it's a sensitive and delicate issue, he thinks that policy change has been held back by political interest groups to the point where it no longer makes sense.

"We now have these fantastic ultra-sensitive screening tests. We didn't have those in 1983 and 1984 and now we do. So you have to really ask the question, is it still worth maintaining an official policy of discrimination against gay men in light of all this advance in technology? And when they say the science supports this, I think that's nonsense. The science doesn't support it."

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Canada's limitations on gay blood donations 'ridiculous': HIV researchers

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Canada's current limitations on blood donations from men who have sex with men don't match the science, according to some HIV researchers. Currently, gay men can donate blood if they have not had sex with a man for at least five years. On August 15, that waiting period will be reduced to one year.

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Appeal to Authority

Definition: Having a celebrity endorse their product amplifies sales and creates a bias for the product.

The company Proactiv is known to have celebrities endorse their product.

Katy Perry is one of the dozen of celebrity endorsers to work with Proactiv. Having Katy Perry be the public figure attract young females and the singers fan base.

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Ideological Support

Definition: Claims that are leaned upon religious factors and reasoning's.

This webpage explains one individual’s experience of meeting God in her near death experience.  This Ideological Red Flag is a subjective experience that is hard to confirm as there is no concrete scientific information available for this claim.

Through the article, terms from the bible are used descriptively. The author states that it is her obligation and our moral responsibly to have faith in her experience.

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Her lifelong search for a loving God and release from the paralyzing fear of death culminated in a brief journey to heaven after a debilitating illness. The near-death experience transformed Linda, showing her that God is only a loving God, who does not judge and punish.

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Ancient Wisdom

Definition: The belief that Ancient science may result in gods having earthy powers to manipulate beings. The belief in ancient knowledge and early medicine.

In this article the author discusses the old practice of determining the sex of a pregnant woman's baby.

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Home pregnancy tests are kind of magical-they're like those litmus test things from junior high science, except they can tell you whether you've got a baby in there. These tests work by detecting trace levels of the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in urine; hCG is present after egg implantation, which occurs six to 12 days after fertilization, and is secreted by the cells that are beginning to form the placenta. Home pregnancy tests became widely available in 1978, although they took two hours to develop and were accurate for negative results only 80 percent of the time. Nowadays, they can supposedly tell as early as five days before your missed period.

Before the invention of this miraculous device, the most reliable test was just to wait and see. But while it might be a nice surprise to find out you're pregnant the old-fashioned way-barfing, missing periods, having a baby-women still wanted to know as early as possible whether or not they were harboring a tiny human.

So how'd they do it? Weirdly enough, it always comes back to pee.

1. The Wheat and Barley Test

One of the earliest, if not the earliest, home pregnancy tests came from Ancient Egypt. In 1350 BCE, women were advised to urinate on wheat and barley seeds over the course of several days; if the wheat sprouted, she was having a girl, and if the barley sprouted, a boy. If neither sprouted, she wasn't pregnant. The most interesting thing about this test was that it actually worked: In 1963, a laboratory experimented with the wheat and barley test and found that, 70 percent of the time, the urine of pregnant women would cause the seeds to sprout, while the urine of non-pregnant women and men didn't. The Ancient Egyptians knew everything.

2. The Onion Test

While the Ancient Egyptians were on to something with the wheat and barley test, they and the Ancient Greeks seem to have had a fuzzy understanding of anatomy. Both Egyptian medical papyri and Hippocrates, lauded as the father of medicine, suggested that a woman who suspected she might be pregnant insert an onion or other strong-smelling bulbous vegetable into her vagina overnight. If her breath smelled of onions the next morning, she wasn't pregnant; this was based on the idea that her womb was open, and wafting the oniony scent up to her mouth like a wind tunnel. If she were pregnant, then the womb would be closed, so no wind tunnel.

3. The Latch Test

From The Distaff Gospels [ PDF], a collection of women's medical lore written in the late 15th century: "My friends, if you want to know if a woman is pregnant, you must ask her to pee in a basin and then put a latch or a key in it, but it is better to use a latch-leave this latch in the basin with the urine for three or four hours. Then throw the urine away and remove the latch. If you see the impression of the latch on the basin, be sure that the woman is pregnant. If not, she is not pregnant." Say what now?

4. Piss Prophets

As bizarre as the "latch test" sounds, it still recognized that something in pregnant lady pee was different than non-pregnant lady or man pee, a fact that 16th century European " piss prophets " also recognized. These so-called experts claimed that they could determine whether or not a woman was with child by the color and characteristics of her urine. Some also mixed urine with wine and observed the results, a test that might have seen some success, given that alcohol can react to proteins present in pregnant lady pee. Of course, these piss prophets didn't limit their wee-wee divination to pregnant ladies; they could also, by examining urine, intuit whether the urine's owner was suffering from any illness or disease.

5. Look Into My Eyes

One 16th century physician, Jacques Guillemeau, claimed that you could tell by a woman's eyes whether she was pregnant. Guillemeau, author of an influential treatise on ophthalmology, claimed that as early as the second month, "a pregnant woman gets deep-set eyes with small pupils, drooping lids and swollen little veins in the corner of the eye." That is likely not true, but he was right about one thing: Eyes can change during pregnancy, affecting your vision. This is why it's not a good idea to get new contacts or prescription glasses during pregnancy.

6. I Saw the Sign

Early on in pregnancy, roughly six to eight weeks in, the cervix, labia and vagina can take on a dark bluish or purple-red hue, owing to the increased blood flow to the area. This remarkable indication of pregnancy was first noticed in 1836 by a French physician. It later became known as Chadwick's sign, after James Read Chadwick, an obstetrics doctor who brought the discovery up at a meeting of the American Gynecological Society in 1886. But given that you had to look at the vagina to see the sign, and how prudish 19th century doctors tended to be, it's unlikely that Chadwick's sign was used very often as an indicator of pregnancy.

7. The Rabbit Test

Aside from observational tests such as Chadwick's sign, pregnancy tests were still an unpleasant crapshoot up until the 20th century. Investigation into hormones, the big thing in science at the turn of the century, just made pregnancy testing unpleasant for a bunch of rabbits, mice, and rats.

In the 1920s, two German scientists, Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek, determined that there was a specific hormone present in the urine of pregnant women that seemed to be linked to ovary growth; we now know it as human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG. They figured this out by injecting the urine of pregnant women into sexually immature rabbits, rats, and mice, which would induce ovarian development. Most of the time, the pregnant lady pee would produce bulging masses on the animals' ovaries, a sure indication of the presence of hCG. So, the Rabbit Test was born.

According to a contemporary medical journal, it worked like this: A sample of urine was injected into a group of young female mice over a period of five days. On the fifth day, the mice were killed and autopsied to examine the state of their ovaries. If their reproductive bits looked excited, the test was positive. If you wanted your results in less than five days, they could simply use more mice.

This method ran through a lot of rabbits, mice, and rats; though the phrase "the rabbit died" popularly meant that the woman was pregnant, in actuality, all of the rabbits-and the mice and rats-died. Though doctors could look at the ovaries of the animal without killing it, that tended to be too much trouble.

8. The Frog Test

Though it worked on the same principle as the Rabbit Test, this one was actually a bit better-at least the animal remained alive at the end of it. In the late 1940s, scientists determined that when pregnant lady pee is injected into a live toad or frog, the unfortunate amphibian will produce eggs within 24 hours. The toad or frog lived to see another day and, usually, another test. The test was also called the "Bufo" test, after the particular species of toad usually used.

As horrible as the animal-killing tests sound, they were important steps on the road to first the blood test and then the home pregnancy test, which fundamentally changed the way women think about pregnancy and their own bodies. So let's all say a quiet thank you to the rabbits, rats, mice, frogs, and onions who were sacrificed for the cause.
See Also: 12 Terrible Pieces of Advice for Pregnant Women

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8 Historical Methods of Detecting Pregnancy

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Home pregnancy tests are kind of magical-they're like those litmus test things from junior high science, except they can tell you whether you've got a baby in there. These tests work by detecting trace levels of the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in urine; hCG is present after egg implantation, which occurs six to 12 days after fertilization, and is secreted by the cells that are beginning to form the placenta.

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Definition: Some believe in this book although it is unexplainable. This website contain Unexplained content as there is a lack of scientist information to support the content written in this book.

The book is to be anonymous and have cases of UFO and alien sightings with locations. Photos and drawings of sighting are included also.

This is also the only location this content can be found in.

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Project BLUE BOOK - Unidentified Flying Objects

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This File Moved This file was moved to a location to make it easier for you to locate similar information. Please update your links and bookmarks. Click the link below to find the page in its new location. http://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html

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Agenticity

Defintion: Agenticity is when people allow their minds to allow the divine to control the outcomes of worldly situations.

This article list a variety of events where ghost have intervened in day to day events.

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Ghosts are the souls of dead people who exist in an unseen world and visit living people. Many people believe that they have seen ghosts and believe in their existence. The idea of ghosts and haunted houses are popular in fiction.

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Ghosts latest news, pictures, sightings and theories | Express.co.uk

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Ghosts are the souls of dead people who exist in an unseen world and visit living people. Many people believe that they have seen ghosts and believe in their existence. The idea of ghosts and haunted houses are popular in fiction.

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Patternicity

Definition:  To believe in the faith or personal reasoning before other options that are put forward.

Patternicity is present in this example as Christians believe in mysterious sounds of trumpet sounding deems that the ends is near.

The bible states that in the Revelation seven trumpets are sounded to cue apocalyptic events to come.

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Have you heard those weird, apocalyptic trumpet-like noises coming from the sky? People all over the world say they have.

So what are they? The short answer is no one knows.

The latest video of the mystery comes from Germany and was posted to YouTube last month.

In it, the puzzled photographer sticks a camera out the window as a woman asks in German, "What is that?"

In the background is heard a metallic-type groaning sound coming from the sky as if someone just put the key in the ignition of a large, invisible "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" kind of vehicle and started it up. The video is all the more eerie because a young boy is standing motionless in the street as the noise amplifies.

Take a listen. What do you think that is?

Germany April 4, 2015

The sounds have been reported over the last several years from California to Texas to Australia and many parts in between. The website StrangeSounds.org, which chronicles the incidents, has compiled a list of more than 150 videos of the audible weirdness.

The phenomena has been described variably as the blare of a trumpet, a groaning metallic sound, an airplane engine, a loud rumbling, even humming.

So what's really causing the noise?

The rumor-debunking website Snopes says that scientists point to natural causes, such as earthquakes, tidal waves, methane explosions and even shifting sand dunes, as the possible reasons for the aural oddities.

David Hill, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist, said that small earthquakes below the surface can transmit sounds of the earth's cracking crust. He also said that the emissions could come from meteors.

Other theories include electrical power lines, electromagnetic radiation, high pressure gas lines, wireless communications devices, submarines and - saving the best for last - the reverberating mating call of a male Midshipman fish. (Can't make this stuff up.)

Midshipman fish - Wikipedia

One poster had this to say: "I think people are so accustomed to hearing these sounds in their back yards ( I hear them in mine) they don't realize that this is not normal, it is the hidden machines being used to control the weather and sometimes to cause quakes. They are weapons hidden among us."

Other guesses include God's trumpets, aliens, the slippage of the planet's core and earth's growing pains.

Some even point to HAARP, aka the U.S. government's High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a research program that analyzed the ionosphere with the aim to develop enhancement technologies for radio communication and surveillance.

Conspiracy theorists claimed the program, which was shut down last year, was really an effort to control everything from the weather to people's minds.

The videos could also be totally fake. One woman who posted a "strange sound" incident to YouTube later admitted all she did was point her iPhone out the window as her laptop played the soundtrack behind her.

But the couple in Germany who posted the latest video said theirs was definitely not a hoax.

Here are a sample of the videos posted by perplexed participants in the "great weird noises from the sky" phenomenon.

Strange noises from the sky

New Jersey Nov. 2014 "God's Trumpets?"

Texas Jan. 24, 2012 "So weird."

New Zealand April 12, 2013 "Creepy stuff!"

Chicago May 13, 2012 "It's coming from the sky."

Australia Jan. 22, 2012 "What the hell is that?" Is that coming from the clouds?"

Finland Nov. 25, 2012 "Super creepy."

As one of the scientists in this famous movie said: "I hope someone is taking all this down."

Close Encounters

Copyright © 2018, The San Diego Union-Tribune

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What's causing those weird trumpet noises in the sky?

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Have you heard those weird, apocalyptic trumpet-like noises coming from the sky? People all over the world say they have. So what are they? The short answer is no one knows. The latest video of the mystery comes from Germany and was posted to YouTube last month.

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An Ancient practice in Ancient Egypt explains that early pregnancy science in Ancient Egypt could indicate if a woman was pregnant, as well as the sex of the fetus.